


hearts of oak

by annejumps



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Dandy Eddie Kaspbrak, Drinking to Cope, Gambling, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Napoleonic Wars, Period-Typical Homophobia, Reunions, Sailor Richie Tozier, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24306058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annejumps/pseuds/annejumps
Summary: “Will you be going out in this storm tonight, or have you got a room here?”“I have no room here,” Edward says, brow furrowed. “I shall try and obtain one—”“They are quite full, I’m afraid. You may bunk with me, that is if you do not fear my unclean, sinful hands,” he adds with a slight sneer.“I do not,” Edward says, keeping a gaze so steady it nearly causes Richard to falter.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 26
Kudos: 172





	hearts of oak

The absolute last man on Earth Richard Tozier would have expected to see in this crowded, loud, and decidedly seedy inn’s tavern is Edward Kaspbrak. In fact, at first he’s quite certain the drink has hold of him and he’s having visions. It isn’t as though such a state is unfamiliar to him, after all. 

But no, it is indeed Kaspbrak, he of the soulful dark eyes and fine features, he who refused Richard’s offer to away into the countryside and leave everything behind, he who even yet holds Richard’s heart in his hand. The moment after Richard realizes this it is as if no time at all has passed, and as if the war he ran away to join, so that he’d never have to witness Edward’s marriage to his betrothed, never even took place.

He sets his now-emptied leaded glass on the bar heavily, as Edward walks directly toward him through the crush of persons. Richard can only blink through his spectacles at him, speechless; although his time in the service was marked by his quick wit and sharp, foolish tongue, it seems to be failing him now. It was said foolish tongue that no doubt turned Edward against him many years ago—one too many harsh words borne of heartbreak—but it was the same tongue that was whispered of in a far more scandalous and vastly more inappropriate context, in the open secrets kept on sailing ships. Such things were not things Edward would know of, no—Edward was content to do as his mother ordered and marry a respectable bride.

Edward stops before him, close. “I was told you were here,” he says, low.

“And who might you be?” Richard returns, smoothly but for how his voice shakes just slightly, rotgut whiskey on his breath.

Edward cuts him with a sharpened glance. “I know that we did not part on the best of terms—”

“As you see, I have forgotten what terms on which we parted altogether,” Richard interrupts, “as I’m sure I have no blighted idea who on God’s green Earth you are, sir.”

Edward sighs. “Richard, I see you have not changed in the slightest.”

“More’s the pity, no doubt. Would that I could have changed myself, o lovely and mysterious stranger, but it seems such things are indeed impossible.” Richard raises a hand to catch Hanscom, the barkeep’s, attention. “Another.” When it’s handed to him he drinks it in one go, something mean in him relishing Edward’s alarmed expression as he observes, and the glass joins the others before him. 

“Richard,” Edward scolds.

“Strikingly overfamiliar form of address— That’s Lieutenant Tozier to you, stranger,” Richard tells him, swallowing at the burn of the whiskey down his throat. 

Edward stares, eyes widening for a moment in what Richard imagines might be a sign of his being impressed. 

“Did you think I could not attain such a rank? I am not so feckless as all that, despite the lies your mother might have fed you. —Stranger,” Richard adds. “And who might it have been who directed you here to find me for God alone knows what foolish purpose?”

“Captain Denbrough, of course,” Edward answers, just as a rumble of thunder sounds outside, bringing with it an air of foreboding. 

Captain William Denbrough, indeed. Of course. Richard’s captain was overly given to flights of fancy and foolishness, yet every one of his sailors would follow him to the ends of the Earth. “Oh? Has he perhaps found religion this time, and sent you to save me from my life of sin?” 

“No. I sought you for my own purposes.”

Richard pauses in asking for another glass to look Edward up and down, not bothering to keep what must be a lascivious look from his visage, judging from how Edward’s own face reddens. “Your own purposes? And what might those be, pray tell?”

“I came to tell you that I….” Here Edward falters, swallowing, a slight clench of his jaw betraying his efforts to steel himself. Richard had known him as a brave child, constantly endeavoring to escape the tentacles of his mother’s misguided and overbearing sort of love, but at last it was her love that won, transferred as it was to the grips of a likely match that would keep Edward’s riches in their immediate circles, as the only son. No, Edward would not go to Oxford; no, he would not tour Europe. He would certainly not be an officer in the Royal Navy, his mother’s manufactured concerns for his health and stature being what they were. And so it was his fate to be sealed away in the dark drawing rooms of an ancient mansion, and last Richard was aware he had accepted it. No doubt he’d spent these last ten years indulging his mother’s and his wife’s every capricious mood, with a passel of brats for his trouble.

“Speak up, will you? I cannot hear you over this accursed din,” Richard bites out. 

A spirited flash in Edward’s eyes, the heat and mulishness Richard so well remembered. “I came to tell you, as soon as I’d heard you’d returned— I am a widower.”

Richard’s heart does something odd. “Am I to rejoice at the death of your beloved bride? I do not speak ill of the dead.”

“I—”

“I cannot imagine why you would assume I’d be concerned one way or another with the state of your matrimony.”

“I should never have married.”

“You’ll find no argument from me in that regard. In fact as I recall, I once made my opinion quite clear to you on that point. If you’ll excuse me, I’m expected at a game of cards in the next room—I’ve run up a bit of a debt, you see, and Hanlon’s out for blood again tonight.” Richard gets up from his stool, only staggering slightly. “Have you anything to add, or were you merely serving as an obituary messenger?”

“Richard!” Edward says, low and urgent, arresting Richard in place with a fist curling in the lapels of his tailcoat.

“Unhand me,” Richard breathes, although he dares not attempt to wrench himself from Edward’s hold.

“Stay. Speak with me,” Edward says, a plea in his large, expressive eyes. Something on Richard’s countenance causes him to drop his gaze.

Richard laughs, soft and dry. “Ah, now you wish to keep me in one place. Now that ten years have passed and there are no difficult choices before you.”

“No difficult choices, perhaps, but also no obstacles,” Edward says, gaze tripping back up from where his hand still grasps Richard’s coat to his eyes. “My mother has passed. I may do as I please.”

“Oh?” Richard swallows. “You may do as you please, and seek out strange men for your own purposes?”

“No ‘strange men,’ Richard. Just you.”

Richard barks out a shaky laugh. “Ah, but there are many who do say I am strange.” He adds in a lower voice, leaning in slightly, “Stranger perhaps than you might imagine—I must assume that you know nothing of what lonely sailors get up to on long deployments aboardship.”

The color rises in Edward’s cheeks, but his hold on Richard’s coat does not loosen. “I may know nothing, but I can imagine.”

“Can you?” Richard says immediately; he leans in further, mouth so close now to Edward’s ear. “Can you imagine the lash flaying the no-doubt delicate skin of your back? Can you imagine being hanged for sodomy?”

Edward’s eyes widen.

“And yet,” Richard continues, in a murmur, “I was willing to risk that to find some sort of substitute, poor as it was, for what you would not give me.”

“Do not place the blame on me!” Edward says. He at last releases Richard’s coat, as though realizing he perhaps held it too long. “What would you have had me do?”

Richard sighs. “Do not ask me such a thing. The list is too long and too ribald.”

“Perhaps I was too cowardly for you, back then. I have already said I should never have married. Ten years are already lost to us; will you make me pay with more? Shall I pay for the rest of our lives for making the foolish, safe choice? Will you punish me so? I’ve come to you—what more can I do?”

“Crawl on your hands and knees,” Richard murmurs, half to himself, swaying slightly with Edward no longer holding on to him. “Beg me as I imagined you begging me for years, every night I slept in my hammock, aching for you.”

“You are being unfair,” Edward says, flushed. “I had no understanding of what you wanted from me—you merely asked me to run away with you.” 

“Was that not clear enough? Did you have no inkling of my intentions?”

“I must say I did not—your addresses to me were always japes, you were forever mocking me. I had no understanding then that your desires could truly be the same as mine, little as I did understand my own… urges.”

Richard presses his lips together, and looks away because he can no longer bear to look into Edward’s dark eyes. “And yet you come to me the moment your wife’s breath has left her body? You seek me out for your own purposes, as you say—did you not think I would simply mock you?”

“I understand you better now, and ten years has had the effect of teaching me what the cost is of going without.”

“Do you not have an entire tribe of children whose futures you must ensure?” Richard asks, bitterness rising in his throat.

“I have no issue,” Edward admits, hesitantly. “My wife was often poorly, and we… our relationship was not one conducive to—”

“Say no more,” Richard says, closing his eyes for a moment, shaking the image from his head of Edward in bed with a woman, his wife. The thunder sounds again, shaking the place. The patrons entering are soaked with rain, and past them through the doorway he can see it’s pouring outside, and well dark. “Will you be going out in this storm tonight, or have you got a room here?”

“I have no room here,” Edward says, brow furrowed. “I shall try and obtain one—”

“They are quite full, I’m afraid. You may bunk with me, that is if you do not fear my unclean, sinful hands,” he adds with a slight sneer.

“I do not,” Edward says, keeping a gaze so steady it nearly causes Richard to falter.

“Then let us make haste,” Richard says, peeling some notes from his waistcoat and tossing them toward Hanscom. Hanlon’s game will simply have to wait. From the looks Richard has seen Hanlon stray toward Captain Denbrough, he wonders if he’d understand. But that is most certainly a thought for another time.

Richard grips Edward’s arm above the elbow, steering him toward the stairs. It is very possible that any observer might easily divine their purpose, yet Richard finds he does not particularly care, oddly enough, not with his heart’s desire in his sights. Edward is a slighter man than he is, and he offers no especial resistance to Richard’s maneuverings of him. They encounter no one on the stairs to give them a second glance, and the hall outside his room is quiet. 

Richard guides him inside, closing the door. By candlelight, Edward’s skin is luminous in contrast to his crisp white cravat, his eyes bright. 

Doubt creeps over Richard. As strong as his desire is, and although Edward alluded to returning such feelings in kind, he cannot be certain that Edward truly has any idea what his presence here suggests. “Understand this,” Richard tells him. “You are under no obligation to me.”

Edward tilts his head. “I do not take your meaning. I was intending to reimburse you for half the cost of the room. I have the cash on me.”

“I mean,” Richard says, “that merely because you could not find a room, and I offered you the use of mine, you do not owe me any… favors.” He gestures toward the room at large. “There is only one bed, of course, but I can sleep on the bench at the foot.”

“What foolishness,” Edward says. “A man the size of you sleeping on the bench. Ridiculous notion, I won’t hear of it.”

Richard laughs at his determined tone, his beetled brow. “It is my room, surely I can decide what shall be done in it! Well, you are smaller than I. Perhaps you will fit on it?” Richard feels his smile widening. 

“Nonsense. We shall share the bed. It is perfectly good.”

“Ah. Worry not, I shall endeavor to avoid touching you unnecessarily.” Richard removes his shoes, kicking them toward the bed. Although such a promise requires Herculean self-control in the face of temptation, should Edward require it of him, he will manage it. If he has erred in his assumption that Edward might want what he wants, the price could be a permanent end to their contact, a worse fate perhaps than what the law might have in store for him should Edward report him to the law.

“Then I’m heartened to know that all the touching I want from you is considered by me to be quite necessary indeed.” Edward steps forward then, cupping Richard’s face in his hands, tipping up in his fine little shoes to kiss him. Richard’s lips part on a gasp of astonishment, and Edward’s tongue finds his way between them, which is a shocking development indeed. One might have suspected that Edward Kaspbrak knew nothing of kissing. One is pleased sometimes to be proven wrong. Edward’s kiss is greedy, surprisingly so, and he is already beginning to attempt peeling Richard’s coat from his shoulders. 

Richard breaks their contact on an inhalation. “Take care,” he mock-scolds, “this uniform was bestowed upon me by the Royal Navy and I do not know where I shall find another, should you tear it in your haste.”

“Hush your nonsense,” Edward tells him, industriously working to shed Richard of his coat, and then starting on his waistcoat. Richard watches his nimble fingers, sees their slight trembling. 

“Will you not take off your fine clothes, or shall I take them off for you?” Richard asks after shrugging out of that garment as well, as Edward loosens his cravat and discards it, having made short work of Richard’s careless knot. Standing in his shirt, Richard observes himself being looked at, Edward evidently distracted from the question by some mystery. 

“You are far too broad in the shoulders,” Edward tells him finally, looking quite put out. Ah.

“My apologies,” Richard says, with a scraping bow. “I cannot help it. Come here.” He reaches for Edward, beginning to unbutton his fine wool coat. Edward shrugs out of it with ease, tipping up again to kiss him, untucking Richard’s shirt from his trousers as he does, hands finding his bare skin. Richard cannot prevent a shudder at the feeling of Edward’s fingers under his clothes, on his flesh. Clumsy, he works the buttons of Edward’s velvet waistcoat; that is shrugged off to join the coat on the floor, and Richard works to untie the ridiculous cravat that wraps around Edward’s high collar, all while avoiding breaking the contact of their lips, which is most distracting indeed.

He must break to take a breath. “Do you fancy yourself some sort of dandy?” he complains as he finally unties and draws off the cravat. He wastes no time in removing Edward’s shirt. Edward’s form is beautiful, lean and perfect. Richard expected nothing less. 

“I like nice things,” Edward defends, and focuses then on removing Richard’s shirt. “Too broad by half,” he mutters, tracing the span of Richard’s shoulders before leaning in to kiss him again. Richard, emboldened now by their half-naked state, wraps his arms around Edward, pulling him up against him, noting how this makes him gasp, makes him insistently push his tongue into Richard’s mouth again. And— oh God, just as he was beginning to despair of how hard he was in his breeches, he finds he’s close enough now to know Edward is hard as well. The discovery is electric. 

“Come here, come here. Confound these clothes,” Richard mutters, frantically unbuttoning his trousers and shedding them, sitting on the bed in his underclothes and stockings. Edward removes his shoes, his stockings, and steps toward Richard in his trousers, and Richard cannot do anything for the moment but wrap his arms around him and pull him close, and kiss whatever skin he can manage to. Edward’s hands are in his hair, and pressing close, he tilts Richard’s head back with a gentle but persistent pulling, to make Richard look up at him. 

“What did you do? With them?”

“‘Them’?”

“The men you….” Edward trails off, face reddening in the guttering candlelight. 

“Ah. Them.” Richard presses a kiss to Edward’s chest, just over his heart. “Trust me that it was all very furtive. Never did we have the luxury of time to undress each other in private.” His tone is wry. “I have reserved that for you, though the effort has taken me an abominably long time.” He unbuttons Edward’s trousers; stepping out of them, Edward stands before him in only a thin undergarment. His stomach is flat; a dusting of dark hair descends under the cloth, which is tented out with his arousal. 

“Yes, but what did you _do_?” Edward persists. Stubborn man, never to stray from his course once he’d found it.

Richard cups his hand over the tented material. It’s a ghost of a touch, yet he can feel the heat radiating from Edward’s body against his palm. With a groan, Edward rocks into his palm, seeking pressure, Richard knows, and in answer he wraps a hand loosely around him and squeezes, gentle.

“God,” Edward gasps, fingers restless in Richard’s hair again. “Please—” He cuts himself off for whatever reason, rocking forward, and Richard undoes his underclothes, which slide down his hips, freeing Edward to his hungering gaze. He is like a classical statue, surely lovelier than any man Richard has seen, perhaps lovelier than any man to have existed.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Richard sighs, wanting to sit back and simply _look_ for a moment, eat him up with his eyes as this is the first opportunity he’s had to see him this way, and he is far from sure there will be another one. But Edward has other ideas, and is pushing him back onto the bed with a force that knocks the breath from him for a moment. He undoes Richard’s underclothes, and tugs them off. 

“Tell me. Show me,” he demands.

“It was never anything truly special,” Richard demurs, doing his best not to focus on how Edward is raking him over with his eyes, devouring him, “hardly even anything worthy of being called sin.” _Because it wasn’t you_ , he thinks. _For you, I’d sin. For you, I’d face the fires of hell. One night, with you_. 

Edward clambers onto him, and is above him, arms and legs caging him in. His cock is red, and dripping, and Richard moves to wrap a hand around it again. Edward gasps, closing his eyes tightly for a moment. 

“It was this, sometimes,” Richard says, hearing how breathless his own voice sounds. He moves his hand over Edward’s cock. “Sometimes my mouth. You did once say I seemed always to keep my tongue employed.” He smiles, but Edward appears too dazed to share the joke, pressing his hips forward to chase the feeling of Richard’s hand. 

Richard can see the moment when his words register. Edward blinks, jaw dropping. “Your mouth?”

“Yes, my mouth indeed. Come here,” he says, gesturing toward himself, sitting up on his elbows. Edward moves up the bed, straddling Richard, his cock nudging against Richard’s lips. With a steadying hand, Richard guides it, kisses it with almost a reverence he doesn’t mean to show until he’s displaying it. He takes the head of it into his mouth, licking it, and Edward groans, low and shattered-sounding. Of course, no one has done this to him before. It is a far from optimal angle, but Richard can’t bear to release him just yet, tasting his very essence and feeling his velvet-soft, slick heat solid on his tongue. Every time before, Richard dealt with some of the more unpleasant aspects of this simply because something in him enjoyed the act in itself; now, he feels he might do this for ages. His own cock is painfully erect. 

“My God,” Edward gasps, a hand going to Richard’s hair again. “You did—”

“Yes, often enough, but with none so lovely as you.”

Edward swallows. “And did you—”

Richard’s neck is paining him greatly, so with much regret, he lies back, although his hands find Edward’s perfect thighs and run gently up and down them. “Do you refer to common buggery? There was some of that, although lard was hard enough to find and my co-conspirators were none too gentle.”

Edward’s eyes are wide. “What did you like best?”

Ah. Since the simple act was introduced to him, Richard has imagined it with Edward many a time. He shall not lose the opportunity to enact it in the flesh, as it were. “Lie yourself down here next to me and I’ll show you. Works well in a hammock, much nicer on a bed.”

Edward lies down, flushed and curious and cock hard as ever. Richard wraps a hand around him again for a firm squeeze; it’s nearly become a habit, but after all it’s hard to resist when it’s to hand. 

“On your side,” Richard directs. His voice is rough with eagerness, and his hands are shaking as he collects slickness from his own leaking cock as well as Edward’s on his fingertips, and glides it over the insides of Edward’s thighs. “Press your thighs together.” Holding his own cock, trembling somewhat, he pushes it forward into that prepared space. “There, do you see?” he asks, voice tight. 

“I do indeed,” Edward breathes, staring down between them. He tightens his thighs yet more around Richard’s cock, drawing a groan from him. One hand cupping Richard’s face, he kisses him again, teeth pulling gently at his lower lip. Helpless, Richard thrusts forward into that tightness, feeling the drag of friction, the pressure. He cups Edward’s hip, pressing his fingers into the gentle swelling of his rounded buttock, groaning into his mouth. Oh, it’s never felt like this before; furtive, desperate, nigh-anonymous pleasure felt cheap, even knowing what it might cost him if found out, but it was pleasure nonetheless. This, however—this is glorious, this is heaven, and he still wants more; there is more to want, pleasures untold and untasted. 

Edward moans against his mouth, shivering at the push and pull of Richard’s cock against his balls, squeezing him tighter there in that sacred space. Richard shifts his weight, pressing Edward somewhat more back into the bed, thrusting faster into that tight space; _fucking_ now is really the only word for it, he’s fucking Edward’s thighs, and he is going to erupt soon because he can stand it no longer. He’s waited long enough for this as it is.

A few moments more and he’s in a frenzy from which he cannot turn back; he comes with a shuddering groan and a crashing wave of pleasure, biting at Edward’s lips, barely mindful of his spectacles when he presses his face into Edward’s neck as his hips slow, digging his fingers into Edward’s flesh. That hand then moves to wrap tightly around Edward’s cock and stroke him until he comes quivering all over Richard’s fingers. Richard kisses him all the while, breathless, absorbing his shivering moans.

He pulls Edward to lie atop him then, both of them sticky with their spent seed, Edward’s head tucked into the bend of his neck. He runs his hand down Edward’s flank, slowly up and down, taking all the liberties he can manage. 

“I hope you are not too badly horrified by my proclivities,” Richard finally says into the contented silence. 

“Were I horrified,” Edward says dryly, “that would be quite hypocritical of me.”

“It is not a strange behavior for many, being hypocritical.” Richard shrugs. “It’s reasonable for me to assume you might be overcome with regret.”

“I am overcome,” Edward says, “but not with regret.”

“What, then?” Richard halts the up and down movement of his hand, wrapping both arms around Edward instead. 

“Great, unprecedented affection,” Edward tells him.

“Ah.” Richard nods. “Do not be fooled, it is common enough to be misled by… feelings of ecstasy after the act. Misled into believing things are more than they are. I speak from experience, in case that was not clear.”

“I do not think that is how I feel.” Edward shifts to kiss his cheek. The sweetness of the gesture does another odd thing to his heartbeat. “I have missed you for ten years, Richard. I thought of you always. I wanted to write you but assumed you would not welcome my correspondence.”

“You may write me now.” Richard smiles, cheeky.

“Hush.” Edward nips gently at his jaw. “I will have no need to write you, as we will be living in the same house together. Just as you proposed.” 

“And where might this be?”

“Wherever we can manage. I don’t wish to return to my home, but I have no children and no wife. I could sell, I could rent. We could live by the sea.” He sits up a little. “That is assuming you are not tired of the sea, which perhaps you are.”

“I thank you for your concern regarding my weariness of the sea.” Richard laughs softly. “If it is with you, I will live anywhere. I will live at the bottom of the sea, if you wish it.”

“Impractical and unlikely,” Edward decides, smiling.

“Ah, that describes me as well as anything. Impractical and unlikely.”

“It is a wonder to me, then, that I love you,” Edward mock-grumbles, eyes bright with an affection Richard had dreamed of seeing.

Richard kisses Edward’s temple and wraps his arms more tightly around him. He’ll no doubt have to get up soon and wet a flannel to dab them off, but for now he wants this and this only, as long as he can have it. “It is a wonder indeed, Edward my love, but far be it from me to question Providence.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know, man! I wanted Regency Reddie and here it is!


End file.
